Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/8/23: HUNTER INDICTED: Blatant Ukraine Corruption Revealed, Ivy League Presidents FACE FIRING After Hearing

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Saagar discusses Hunter's indictments and Ivy League Presidents facing the threat of firing after a hearing on anti Semitism. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week

early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel

seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. Some major breaking news happened last night. Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has been indicted on nine separate charges on failure to pay over $1 million in taxes in the state of California, but delivered by a federal grand jury. Now, you'll have to recall that this indictment, these charges were brought forward after a plea

deal between Hunter Biden and the government collapsed specifically because IRS whistleblowers came forward to allege that there was political pressure involved in the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, and they were not allowed to explore his foreign business dealings and the possible connections to the current president of the United States. After the basically falling apart of the plea deal in that case, in which the judge alleged that it was too sweetheart, the government has now decided to go through with its prosecution effectively after having its hand force. And the details in some of this, this is exactly why Hunter wanted to plea, was to make sure that none of this came out because it is

just stunning in terms of its corruption, in terms of his own personal conduct. And look, we will leave the personal conduct, I think, for a little bit later in this video. We're going to start with what we really need to know about his foreign business dealings. So let's go and put the indictment up there on the screen. And I'm going to go ahead and read directly from this quote. The defendant engaged in a four year scheme to not pay at least one point four million dollars in self-assessed federal taxes that he owed for the tax years 2016 through 2019. From in or about January of 2017 through in or about October 15th, 2020. And to evade the assessment of taxes for the tax year 2018, he filed false returns in or about February of 2020.

So there are three felonies that have been charged, six misdemeanors from failure to pay taxes and failure to file taxes. The indictment also lays out something very important around these business dealings. Hunter Biden hauled in more than $7 million in total gross income from foreign business dealings involving Ukrainian, Romanian, and Chinese entities. At times relevant to this indictment, the defendant served on the board of Ukrainian industrial conglomerate and a Chinese private equity fund. He negotiated and executed contracts and agreements for business and legal services

that paid millions of dollars of compensation to him and or his domestic corporations. Now, the single most important piece of the indictment, I believe, is this. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. What you can see here very clearly is that Hunter Biden's salary from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company of which he was put on the board of while President Obama was president, cut his salary in half just two months after Donald Trump took office. Let me read this quote in or around April of 2014. The defendant joined the board of the director of Burisma Holdings Limited Company, a Ukrainian industrial conglomerate. Burisma agreed to pay the defendant an annual salary of approximately $1 million to be paid in monthly disbursements. In March of 2017, Burisma reduced his compensation to approximately $500,000 a year, and he continued to serve on the board of directors until or around April of 2019.

As a result, he received a total of a million dollars in 2016, which then dropped to $600,000 in 2017 and continued to drop between 2018 and 2019. So very clearly, the vast majority of his income from the Ukrainian energy company came while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States and who was in charge of the Ukraine portfolio. Now, furthermore, and this gets to Hunter's own personal conduct, the Department of Justice was not sparing whatsoever in detailing the vast sums of money that Hunter spent on illicit activities. So I'm going to go ahead and read some of this. And, you know, if you've got kids in the room or anything like that, I would recommend that you take them out. So these are the descriptions of the things that Hunter Biden, according to the IRS and the Department of Justice, did instead of paying his taxes, he withdrew a grand total of one point six million dollars in cash. One point six million between 2016 and 2019. And for payments to various women, he spent six hundred and eighty three thousand dollars in those in that same period for clothing and accessories, $400,000 for, uh, what is described as quote adult entertainment. It's $188,000. Uh, now I have a question too,

which is why is adult entertainment not lumped together with various women? And let's also be very clear here that the one, the payments to quote various women. And let's also be very clear here that the payments to, quote, various women were not necessarily girlfriends or any of that. They're described in the indictment as escorts and sex workers, all basically across the world, including and in Europe. There also was a very important point that the IRS and the Department of Justice sought to clarify that they're not prosecuting Hunter for being a degenerate drug addict. They are also highlighting, quote, even after he became sober, they say well after he regained his sobriety and when he finally did file his outstanding taxes, quote, the defendant did not direct any payments towards his tax liabilities for each of those years. At the same time, the defendant spent large sums to maintain his lifestyle from January through October 15th

of 2020. He spent, as I already showed you, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It appears almost close to a million if you combine the two, three quarters of a million dollars on, quote, various women and adult entertainment. So the reason why, again, all of this is important is it opens up a lot of different exploration for corruption. Who do you know that withdraws one point six million dollars in cash? One point six million. Remember this, folks. If you withdraw more than $10,000, that is supposed to trigger an automatic notification to the FBI, to the Treasury Department, and the bank is supposed to report you. This is something that Jeffrey Epstein also did in order to cover a lot of the tracks

about some of the things he were doing. Now, with Hunter, it appears the DOJ had enough visibility in his finances. They can even itemize the separate amounts that he spent on hookers and on quote adult entertainment, as well as his lavish lifestyle, including clothing, accessories, vehicles, all these other things. So what did the remainder of the $1.6 million in cash do? Who do you know, again, who conducts business that way? Cash under the table is the way that all illicit transactions are done. Now, presumably some of that, maybe even a large portion of that was used to buy drugs, but you also don't know who he gave it to. So that's one separate avenue. The second thing on Burisma,

and this is obviously verifiable from the DOJ tax indictment, it's very clear that they stopped paying him as much whenever he was no longer as useful to them. And I mean, that in and of itself is outrageous because it demonstrates why he was put on the board in the first place and the extent to now which many of his business partners have testified to allegedly Joe Biden at least knowing something or something involved with these. And now the big question for the investigation

is did he receive any cash under the table? We have not even really gone into James Biden, the president of Joe Biden, who has long traded off of his name. And I recommend Ben Schreckinger's book called The Bidens that specifically goes into all of the transactions over the decades of President Joe Biden's career that he and Hunter have taken advantage of the Biden last name to the tune of tens of millions. And look, I'll just finally and take a step back and just I want everybody to think about this. If you were lucky enough to make seven million

dollars to accrue one point four million dollars in taxable income, which is like not which is a crazy sum when we start when we all lean back and we think about it. And you fail to pay your taxes four years in a row. Would you have made it all the way to 2023 without being thrown in jail by the IRS and the DOJ? Getting your sweetheart deal that the judge has to come in and say, no, no, no, this is too sweetheart and forcing the government to prosecute you. The special treatment that this man got from his drug addiction to the ability to trade off of his father's last name because of his drug addiction to avoid jail time, to avoid gun charges, to avoid tax prosecution, and all of that until it becomes a central priority for the opposing party when your father is president. It's just truly disgusting. And it shows you what these people get away with. How many more Hunter Bidens are walking around out there? I guess all people who have made,

or at least a lot of the people who have made $7, $10 million from foreign governments who are paying them directly for influence. So that's the summary of the charges as best as I can make them. I encourage everybody to go and read these raw documents for themselves. As you said, I barely even scratched the surface. Some of the other stuff in there is equally jaw-dropping. And we'll see you all later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin,

it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia

that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024.

VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship

that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret,

even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back, or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. So I brought a monologue to all of you yesterday about these Ivy League presidents. At this point, I'm sure that you have seen the clip somewhere about the three of them unable to immediately say that calling for the genocide of Jews would constitute bullying and harassment under their student code of conduct. Obviously, they've been called out for their hypocrisy on the issue because we all know that if they had been asked about the calling for the genocide of black or trans people or both,

that they would have immediately said, oh, these horrible words, and they would have issued the same fraught language that they did during BLM. Now, this has opened up a lot of debate around whether, especially within the Jewish community. And I think what most of them have fallen on, Bill Ackman, all the other, many who built careers on being free speech absolutists, they're like, no, no, no, no. The thing is, is that we're upset that we as American Jews are not considered marginalized within DEI. Our objection, though, is not to the diversity, equity, inclusion, racial preference regime itself. They just want to also be included as special. And I vehemently

object to that, of course, but they have adopted the same tactics, it seems at this point, of BLM, which is just full-blown cancellation, and to try and get these people to issue struggle session type of statements, which is largely what's occurring now, and now including calling for the immediate expulsion of all of these presidents. And they have been successful. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Wharton Business School, probably one of the most important business schools in the entire country, has now asked the president, Liz McGill,

to resign. Let's go and put the letter, please, up there on the screen. And I'm going to read, you can blah, blah, blah, you can go read through it. But in the call for resignation, they say this, quote, in light of your testimony yesterday before Congress, we demand the university clarify its position regarding any call for harm to any group of people immediately, change any policies that allow such conduct with immediate effect, and discipline all offenders expeditiously. Call for punishment of any person that calls for harm of any group of people. Okay, so that might sound good, but let's think about it for a second.

So if you're calling for the genocide of Jews, okay, that's what they want. They wanna make sure that that would make sure that you're kicked out. But what if you're pro-Israel and you're calling for retaliation on Hamas? Hamas is a group of people. So now what? Wouldn't that be harm on a group of people? Would

that result in your expulsion? Or we could say, obviously both should be allowed. And if it then goes into the realm of harassing, bullying an individual student and crosses the line into violence or somewhere within that, then yeah, that person would be expelled because it would translate into individual and it would translate into pervasive and or it would be violence. But the speech itself should be protected. Now, obviously, that's what I think it should be. That's what a lot of people used to think until they switched on a dime after October 7th. Again, I think their core objection is that they previously considered themselves marginalized and or do so now and are very upset that the DEI people don't also consider

themselves as marginalized. And that's what they want to rectify. They basically want to be the new BLM, even if they disagree with BLM. And if you want to see this on, if you really want to see this, put this up there on the screen. The new president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, a BLM-er herself, has now issued a new clarification to the Harvard Crimson. And the way that she talks is exactly the way that all these university presidents and CEOs talked in June of 2020. Let's listen to some of her comments, okay? She says, quote, I'm sorry. Words matter. When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret. She says, I got caught up in what had become at that point an extended combative exchange about policies and procedures. What I should have had is the

presence of mind to do in that moment was return to guiding my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community, threats to our Jewish students have no place at Harvard, will never go unchallenged. Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth. When the committee invited me to the hearing, I didn't hesitate to agree. It was an opportunity to convey the depth of my personal commitment and institutional commitment to combating anti-Semitism. And she says she has now heard wrenching testimony about how much pain students are in. And to contemplate something, I amplified that pain. That's really difficult.

It makes me sad. Okay. So once again, we basically have the same type of BLM nonsense that we all heard from the commanding heights of American culture for the last couple of years. So let's actually just think about that. Is this a good thing? Is this a net good result that, you know, if you were an American Jew and you're somebody who's cheering this on. I would really urge you to think about the precedent that's being set here about whether it's a good thing to just be able to brute force your way into compelling able to compel these types of statements, get people fired, get people canceled, get people pearl clutching. I don't think this is a good thing. And I hate all these university presidents, but for very different reasons, because they themselves are the product of the racial preferences regime, of the HR bureaucracy, of the speech police. And what I'm watching instead are the people who created such a regime just incorporate a new group into it. They're not changing their practices, not changing their curriculum. They're not changing fundamentally their ideology

about actually getting to a point where we could have free speech on campus, conservative views, liberal views, Palestinian views, Israeli views. I think everything should be allowed, everything. And for those people who say about safety on campus, the language of safetyism is the road to hell. That's how the COVID regime happened, masks, all of that. You're doing it not for yourself, but for somebody else. That's how safe spaces on campus, all of it came back to the idea that your emotional fortitude is so low that you need to be removed entirely from a place where you're not around people who don't agree with you. In my monologue that I did, I actually played some videos of some of these Jewish students who the House of Representatives came forward and they were

saying things like, you got to walk to class and look at posters where people have scribbled things on them that I find offensive. Does that really make you feel unsafe or does it make you feel upset? Feeling upset and unsafe are very different things. Safety is a physical condition. Now I understand there's a big conversation about mental health and all that. And of course, and I feel bad for these students, but the precedent has to be such that in a society, especially in American society, we get to disagree with one another. And actually, the reason we have our First Amendment, the reason that we really, free speech is something that we've always tried to defend in this country, is that other countries don't have free speech. Israel does not have free speech.

Gaza, Hamas, West Bank, they don't have free speech. We don't want to import these third world attitudes into our country and to enforce these types of regimes. That's actually why the DEI regime itself, it's illegitimate. It's un-American. And to have the robust debate, to have the ability to make sure that people aren't getting fired for the wrong reasons, even if you may not like them. And I don't. But I want them to be fired for the right reasons. I want people who are pushing this to say, okay, let's not donate to the university anymore if they're going to have DEI. But unfortunately, that's not what's happening. living in a more censorious in America today in elite higher institutions than we did before October 7th. And I think that's a net negative. So anyway, it's something that I felt like I wanted to speak out on and obviously give you guys the update. Thanks to all to the premium

members who make all of this possible. And we will see you all this weekend if something crazy happens and otherwise on Monday. Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep.

Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall

of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I'm Michael Kasson, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming.

What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.